Reactions Are Mixed As Pueblo Crewmen Await Medals

April 15, 1990|By Los Angeles Daily News

For more than 20 years, the sailors who surrendered the USS Pueblo have been thorns in the side of a Navy that has wavered in its treatment of the men who suffered greatly at the hands of their North Korean captors.

The Navy's response has ranged from decorations to threats of court-martial to indifference with former crewmen especially disappointed by a 1988 decision denying them the prisoner-of-war medals given to veterans from World War I to Vietnam.

"If anybody deserves it, these crewmen deserve it," said Peter Langenberg, now a 44-year-old attorney from South Pasadena, Calif. "We were prisoners. It was no holiday."

But next month in San Diego, that slight will be corrected when the 79 surviving members of the Pueblo will receive medals to mark the 335 days they spent in captivity.

For Langenberg and his shipmates it will be a bittersweet moment pleasure at the recognition and military honor, yet frustration and sadness that they were excluded in the first place.

"It's sort of a day late and a dollar short, but it's terrific," said Robert Chicca of Bonita, Calif., who was a Marine Corps Korean-language specialist on the ship.

In January 1968, North Korean gunboats and aircraft attacked the lightly armed Pueblo, a freighter converted to intelligence-gathering ship operating in the Sea of Japan. Eleven crewmen were injured, one fatally.

Cmdr. Lloyd M. Bucher called for help before surrendering without firing a shot the first capture of a U.S. ship since the War of 1812. The captured crew suffered a brutal 11-month confinement in North Korea.

Because the ship armed only with machine guns surrendered without firing, top military officials suggested that the ship's loss and crew's captivity were partly the fault of the commander and crew.

"To some extent it wasn't their most glorious chapter, so I can understand it," said Langenberg. "But to expect the ship to go out in a blaze of glory is kind of stupid. I don't think the Navy has a tradition of suicide."

The Department of Defense ruled in 1988 that because the United States was not at war with North Korea when the Pueblo was taken, its crew did not qualify for prisoner-of-war medals.

But crewmen argued that their captivity was typical of the experiences of POWs from other American wars.

After being surrounded by a North Korean warship and three torpedo boats on Jan. 23, 1968, the 83-man crew was taken to the port of Wonsan and imprisoned.

One crewman died from injuries suffered during the initial attack on the ship. The remaining 82 were interrogated, beaten and tortured periodically over the next 11 months before being released on Dec. 23, 1968.

After nearly a year of confinement and torture, the crew signed confessions of spying and trespassing.

Release came after the U.S. government signed a similiar confession. The Army general who signed disavowed the document before signing, and said he did so to free the crew.

Decorations were given to 78 crewmen. Bucher was recommended first for the Medal of Honor and then for a court-martial. He received neither.

Navy officials say there was never any intent to slight the Pueblo crew.